


Time To Test Your Wings

by Serie11



Series: Aegyls in Chicago [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Angel Castiel, Angel Claire Novak, Chicago, Dragons, F/F, Fantasy setting, Gen, Human-Ghost Friendship, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, Magic, Other Additional Tags to Be Added as story progresses, Pining, Some oc angels, Wingfic, Wizards, each chapter is a different one shot, world building
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-27 19:15:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6296629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serie11/pseuds/Serie11
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Magic runs through every city on Earth, but it's more concentrated in some places than others. Chicago is one of those places - magic runs rampant, and you don't have to go far to find it. In fact, most of the time, the magic will come to <i>you.</i> </p><p>A series of one shots that come after <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/5823466">Take Flight</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Krissy and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happens one year before Take Flight

The box exploded.

Of fucking course.

Krissy Chambers had been having a Bad Day. Not the kind of bad day where you forgot to brush your hair before you left the house, or you realised that you’d forgotten your phone at home and you were already at work, or you got a test back that you’d worked hard on only to find out that you’d barely passed. Oh no. Krissy would have _killed_ for her bad day to revolve around inconsequential issues like that. But instead, what did she get? A weird goat that was chasing her across the city, a haunted bra, and a probably cursed sword – not to mention that she had been propositioned by a vampire. And now the exploding box. Great. She loved her life.

It all started that morning, when she’d woken up, oblivious to the shit that would go down in less than six hours. She’d stumbled down to breakfast, only half awake, and had gotten a bowl out of the drawer and was holding a box of cereal before she’d realised that the person sitting at her kitchen bench wasn’t her father.

“Umm,” she started eloquently. She and her dad didn’t live in a great neighbourhood. The house had been broken into twice in the five months that they’d lived there, but the people who had broken in had only eaten their food and left. There wasn’t anything of value inside the cramped apartment. The man at the kitchen bench was regarding her coolly, and was wearing a full, three piece suit. The contrast between how put together he was and her own dishevelled state stunned her to silence for a good three seconds, and then it stopped being so shocking. “Hey! What are you doing in my house?”

The man tilted his head. He was clean shaven, and his hair had been slicked back, but now that Krissy was looking, there was something… off about his features. They were too aligned, too symmetrical. It had the effect of being rather beautiful, but rather jarring at the same time. The thing sitting at her counter wasn’t human. More like something that was pretending, but hadn’t realised that what made you human was your flaws.

“Miss Chambers, I presume?” There was a lilt to its voice, but Krissy didn’t recognise the accent. If anything, it put her more on guard.

“I don’t know who you are, but you need to leave my house. You aren’t welcome here.” There was a type of mundane magic in a home. The atmosphere one could create inside a house was very real, and used in the right way, could be a serious barrier to unwelcome magical forces. There wasn’t much of that kind of barrier here, for sure, but it might do something to reduce the intruder’s magic. She wasn’t a wizard – there wasn’t anything she could do, really, if it wanted to attack her.

The intruder sighed slightly. “I’m going to take that as a yes. I’m here as an ambassador, so if you please take this from me, I’d be very grateful.”

Krissy stared at the envelop that it held out. “Well, I don’t know how often you do this, but I don’t think it’s going to be a surprise if I tell you that I’m going to do a lot of things, but taking that isn’t one of them. I’m not going to accept anything from you.”

The creature sighed again. “Miss Chambers, please. I’m a Capricornus, and I have other things to be doing than dealing with wayward teenagers. This message comes from my sponsor, and I assure you that she will not be pleased if I am late. I already had to wait for you to awaken.”

Krissy gulped. Capricornus? Like, Capricorn? Wasn’t that supposed to be a goat? It didn’t look like a goat. It just looked like a normal guy.

The goat guy was looking at her expectantly, still holding the envelope out in one hand. You didn’t just accept gifts from random magical creatures that had no reason to be interested in you. That was a great way to get yourself killed. Goat guy obviously hadn’t had any trouble getting inside, and her proclamation that he wasn’t welcome didn’t seem to be doing anything either, so Krissy took the one option she saw that was left to her – she bolted.

She was closer to the door than goat guy, but she wasted a precious two seconds shoving her father’s crocs ( _ugh,_ but they were the only quick option) onto her feet. She yanked the door open, and ignoring the cry of “Miss Chambers!” coming from behind her, she ran towards the busiest street near where she lived, intent on getting herself lost in the crowd. She’d done it numerous times to get away from pursuers before, and it hadn’t failed her yet. She darted around people on the sidewalk, a few who stared after her because of her getup. Krissy focused on her footing and smirked to herself at the startled exclamations behind her. Shove that up your ass, Capricorn-whatever.

Panting softly, she ducked into a convenient dark and small alleyway and peered around the corner to see if she could spot her well-dressed pursuer. She couldn’t see any suspiciously clean suits, and couldn’t hear any of its soft, lilted words, so she supposed that was a win. She’d gotten away.

Krissy sighed and looked around the alley she was in. It was bigger than she’d originally thought, the slight entrance not seeming very promising except for a place to duck away from being followed. There were a few shop fronts, and several people loitered. Krissy’s eyes widened when she saw that two of the people who were talking on a sidewalk had a yellow beagle and a red bird sitting at their feet or on their shoulder. _Wizards!_

She wrapped her arms around her – the clouds above were threatening snow. Damn Chicago weather. It was February – her birthday was yesterday. Sixteen wasn’t really anything special, but her dad had still scrounged up the cash to buy her a massive cheesecake and a few presents. She’d run out of the house in her pyjamas, and her feet were freezing. Crocs did very little, and keeping feet warm was not one of the limited goals they accomplished.

Krissy stared down the alley that was looking more and more like a street the longer she stood still. There were more people moving around where she’d thought the alley had ended, but she saw now that it didn’t actually end – it kept going on, for quite a while. How had she thought it had ended? She blinked, and the size of the street in front of her doubled. Krissy grasped at her head as a split second of pain went through it, but when she looked up again, she was greeted with a different sight than there had been a second ago.

A bustling street full of people yelling and shopping confronted her. People walked past her with nary a glance, and they were tall and short and thick and thin, but nearly every single one had some kind of animal curling through the air above their heads, perched on a shoulder or following briskly behind their person’s feet. Spirits meant wizards, and wizards hidden away in some obscure alley meant only one thing.  

A Wizard’s Lane.

Krissy fought to close her mouth. Sure, she’d _heard_ of places like this – kept hidden from people who had no magic by clever charms and spells, places where you could buy magical items easily, where no one looked twice if you had dragon burns or if your ears were pointed. The three story mansion across the road from her was a fully-fledged tailoring shop, with honest to god real life models in the windows, spinning slowly and moving gracefully, smiling at the passing people on the street. Next to it was a tavern, and Krissy had no doubt that you could buy more than alcohol inside. Potions, tonics, and concoctions beyond her wildest dreams would all be available.

“First time, huh?”

Krissy whirled to her right, where a man with a blue butterfly floating in his hair was standing. He was wearing a grey cloak, and Krissy swallowed nervously as she bobbed her head in an affirmative. The man – the _wizard_ – nodded sagely.

“Yeah, you can usually tell. You’ve got this dumbstruck look to your face.” He looked her over, and Krissy squared her shoulders in response. If he was going to study her, she was going to study him.

The blue butterfly was the most obvious thing to look at. Krissy couldn’t remember seeing a blue spirit before – a lot of other colours, yeah, but not blue. His grey cloak denoted his membership to the Council of Wizards. His eyes were green, hair a light brown, and he carried a staff in his right hand.

“What is this place?” Krissy blurted.

The wizard raised an eyebrow. “South Market. Where’s the person you came here with?” He had obviously clued to the fact that she had no spirit, and thus did not belong here.

“I didn’t come with anyone,” Krissy said, tilting her head up and attempting to look as ferocious as she could in a ratty tee that served as her pyjamas and said ‘You’re a CATastrophe. I’m PURRfect’ above a picture of a cat. The wizard blinked. “I just needed to find some cover, and this lane looked small and dark,” she caved, after a second. She didn’t need a wizard thinking she was lying and prompt him to do something crazy to her, since no one knew where she was. “I ducked in here, and then it all just kinda… appeared.”

The wizard was silent for a few seconds, and then held out his hand. Krissy took it out of habit. “Dean Winchester,” he said. “I work for the Chicago PD. You shouldn’t have been able to come in here. South Market’s got some of the best wards I know. Even if you’d just jumped in here, you shouldn’t have seen the Marketplace.” He frowned at her, and Krissy shrugged slightly.

“Krissy Chambers,” was what she said in response. So what if she could see the magic alley? She didn’t know why, and she didn’t particularly care either. As long as she’d escaped from the goat that wasn’t a goat, she was fine.

“I think you’ve got a story to tell,” Dean said bemusedly. “Let’s get you into some clothes first, though. I know a place that should work.”

The wizard turned and started walking – further into the Wizard’s Lane. Krissy stressed and fretted for a good second and a half before shrugging. What the hell? Why not? This was probably the only time in her life she’d be able to see this place, so there wasn’t a reason to not take advantage of it while she could. She could already see the bragging rights.  

She hurried after Dean, following his grey cloak through the crowd. He stopped outside a smaller house, and Krissy followed him inside gingerly, not knowing what to expect.

It was… normal. Mostly. Looked like any other second hand clothes shop that she’d been to, except for the parrot hanging from the ceiling – it had two heads, was violently purple and nearly as big as her, and swung one head around to talk when she and Dean walked inside. The other one was resolutely trying to chew its way through the ceiling.

“Gahh! Winchester! Not you again!”

“Good morning to you too, Harold.” Dean sounded resigned. “I just need a change of clothes for Krissy here.”

“It’s always something with you,” Harold twittered. “Never, ‘How are you Harold?’ ‘How’s the family, Harold?’ ‘How can I not be a total dick, Harold?’ This is why I never talk to humans.” The parrot descended into a series of chirps and whistles, apparently ranting to himself. The other head paused in its destruction of the plaster of the ceiling to start chirping back to himself.

“That means we can look around,” Dean told her. Krissy followed after him, not having one clue what to say and having trouble dragging her eyes from the brightly coloured two headed parrot. This morning she’d been just another teenager. Now she was walking around a second hand clothing shop owned by a giant violet parrot with a wizard in front of her. When did this become her life? She was going to put down on record that this was officially a Very Bad Day.

“Just tell the store your size, and it will find everything that fits you.” Krissy side eyed Dean, who was standing to her side and acting as if there was nothing wrong with what he had just said.

“What?”

Dean startled slightly. “Ah, yes, right, no magic. The store is semi-sentient; just tell it what you need, and it’ll find what you want for you. Saves a lot of time.”

Krissy blinked. _This_ was magic? She could _shop_ with magic? She licked her lips and spilled out her size and requested jeans, a cute top, and any boots that were in the shop.

There was a moment of silence, and then a whole assortment of clothes seemed to pop out of nowhere and land in a pile in front of her. Krissy stared at them and then decided that whatever else happened today, she wouldn’t be surprised by it. She would just accept it, and move on. Krissy picked up the pile of clothes and started going through them to find anything she wanted.

Krissy found a top with a cat on it, and stared for a second as the cat _moved_ , tilting its head at her and then licking its paw and grooming its head. Thankfully there was a bra in the pile, and she grabbed that along with a pair of jeans that didn’t look too threadbare.

 “There’s a changing room at the back,” Dean told her, and Krissy ducked back there to throw it all on. There weren’t any shoes in the pile. Krissy very reluctantly put her crocs back on. She came out quickly to find Dean giving the giant parrot something small and shiny. _Too_ shiny. Krissy narrowed her eyes as Dean walked over and nodded at her new clothes. “I gave Harold his payment, so you can have those. Let’s get you out of here, yeah? I’m still not sure how you got in here in the first place…” Krissy shrugged and followed him outside. “Didn’t you say you were hiding? Who were you running from?”

As if Dean’s question has summoned it, the goat that said it was a goat but didn’t look like a goat is standing outside the clothing store. Krissy froze as the fake-goat fixated on her.

“Miss Chambers!” The maybe goat sounded exasperated. “Why did you run away? I need to give you this.”

Krissy blanched, and Dean narrowed his eyes. “Deneb Algedi? What are you doing here?”

The alleged goat looked surprised. Krissy sidled behind Dean slightly. He’d said he was a cop, so maybe he could keep the magical goat away from her.

“Mister Winchester, a pleasure as always.” The Capricornus sounded extremely _un_ pleased, but hey, he had a three piece suit on and apparently called everyone either ‘Mister’ or ‘Miss.’ “Mister Winchester, I have a summons to give to Miss Chambers. If you could step aside so I could give it into her possession, I would be most appreciative.”

Dean looked over his shoulder at Krissy. Krissy swallowed.

“Krissy,” Dean started, but yeah. Cop or not, she didn’t need to be involved with _anything_ magical. That’s what got her mother killed, and what cost her father his job, sending them into the vicious circle of poverty. Magic was definitely not something she needed in her life. She ducked away as Dean turned back to the Capricornus, and ignored his shout.

_Left._

What?

_Go left, you idiot. The blue wizard won’t think for you to be there._

What the hell? Krissy looked to the left – the tavern that she passed earlier. The entrance to the alley was in sight, but the weird voice was probably right – Dean would expect her to go straight for the streets. She opened the tavern door and stepped inside.

It wasn’t as smoky as she’d expected. The smell of alcohol hung in the air, alongside the sickly sweetness of the rushes under her feet, trying to cover up the smell of vomit. Apparently even magic couldn’t clean that up. Krissy wasn’t even surprised – just a little disappointed.

_Hide behind that pillar. The blue wizard will look in here, but it will only be for a second._

“Who are you?” Krissy hissed.

_Just do it. Then we can talk._

She swallowed but shoved her way through the crowd to a corner, where she slid to the floor in an attempt to remove herself from anyone’s sight. She heard the door open again, but after a second it closed, and Krissy let out a breath of relief. She was under a window, and she looked up, wondering if she could peek outside and check to see if they were gone.

_Don’t!_

“Who are you? Why are you helping me?” Krissy whispered, but she stayed where she was. There was silence from the voice for a long few seconds. The sounds of the bar were a bit quieter here, since she was on the opposite side of the room to where most of the alcohol was being served – and was that drink _moving?_ Just looking around the tavern, Krissy saw more diversity than she was accustomed to, and Chicago wasn’t usually slack in that respect.

The roar of voices inside almost drowned out the conversation going on above her head.

“… Krissy… magic…”

Krissy jerked, and then strained to hear outside, but the multitude of voices inside made it difficult to distinguish Dean’s words.

“… elf stole my…”

“… can’t do time magic here!”

“… believe that there’s a fucking _dragon_...”

“… I can track her through her magic…”

“… people are scared of blue wizards enough as it…”

“… and then Bertha said…”

“… I can feel her magic, she’s near…”

“… a giant tree, I’m not kidding you…”

“…did you hear that Hellridge Co is starting…”

“… as if I could afford a siren for a night…”

“… shut up Deneb Algedi, you weren’t any better to me…”

Krissy listened harder, but she couldn’t make out Dean or Dennie Algae, or whatever his name was. They must have moved away from the window. She’d pieced together most of what she’d heard, and it didn’t sound pretty.

_You don’t know why they’re after you?_

“No,” Krissy said miserably. “I just want to go home. And you still haven’t told me who you are.”

If it was possible, the voice sighed. _I’m… a ghost._

Krissy blinked. Then she let out a long breath, and remembered her decision to not be surprised at anything else that happened today. A ghost. Alrighty then.

“Okay,” Krissy said. “Are you, like, haunting something, or me, or did you just choose to pop by and help me?”

_My soul is attached to the bra you’re wearing. I was sure I’d never get out of that second hand clothes shop._

A haunted bra. Why the fuck not?

“Do you reckon it’s safe to move?”

_Should be. I think they’re gone._

“Do you have a name, oh ghost haunting my bra?”

_Umm. Kate._

Kate. Such a normal name for such a not normal situation.

“Okay, Kate. Until we’re out of this, I suppose we’re in it together. Let’s roll.”

When Krissy left the tavern, she couldn’t see Dean or Dennie Algae anywhere. The magical chaos of the Wizard’s Lane was too much for her, so she started walking to the entrance, and back to the normal, boring streets of Chicago, where she had half of an idea what was happening and didn’t get accosted by two headed parrots or wizard cops.

“So, how did you end up haunting a bra?” Krissy asked. “I mean, uh, I guess you’re dead?”

 _Yeah_. Kate said. _I got killed wearing the bra. Just the bra._

She was wearing something that someone _died_ in? Krissy fought to not shudder.

“Do you want, like, closure or something? How come you’re haunting the bra? Do all people haunt things when they die? Are there ghosts everywhere and I just can’t see them?”

_There are many ghosts, but not everyone who dies becomes a ghost. Normally, only the people who desperately want to stay to finish something or do something before they die stay as ghosts. Some ghosts don’t even know that they’re dead. Those are usually the people with no magic, who don’t know what’s happening to them, still._

“So… why are you still here?”

Kate was quiet for a long time. Krissy wished she had a hat to pull over her head. She felt glaringly obvious just walking around in the same clothes that Dean had bartered for her. She wound her way through the streets, not making her way directly home. Her dad was probably back from work now, and he’d be wondering where she was. She hadn’t had time to grab her phone before she’d been chased out of her own home, so if her father saw that she’d left it there, he’d probably freak out, because she didn’t go anywhere without her phone. But she didn’t want to go back – Dennie Algae knew where she lived.

 _I don’t know why I’m here,_ Kate said, after Krissy had walked down three long streets aimlessly. _But I think that it might have something to do with how I died._

“How did you die?” Krissy winced. Could she ask that? Was it insensitive to ask a ghost how they died?

_Umm. I’m not really sure. I remember I was out with my boyfriend, Michael. We were at a club, and then I can’t really remember what happened next. It all kinda blurs out into nothing. I’ve been told that that isn’t unusual. The other ghosts that I’ve met say that if you die really traumatically, then you might not recall exactly how you died._

“Do you know why you’re here though? Why did you become a ghost?” Krissy had just decided to roll with it. If her bra was haunted, then her bra was haunted. If she could help Kate, then she was going to help as much as she was able to. She didn’t really have anything else to be doing, so why not?

_I think it has something to do with my sister, Tasha._

“Why?”

_She’s a werewolf._

Because things couldn’t get any weirder. Krissy sighed. Every time she thought that it just felt like she’d put her foot in her own mouth. This was turning out to be a No Good, Very Bad Day.

_Can we go and see her? If I see that she’s fine, I think I’ll be able to move on. Please._

Well, she’d been asked less reasonable requests. Kate was dead – there was no reason she couldn’t go and see Tasha, if it could free Kate from haunting the bra. Krissy’d been the one to pick it up, so she felt a strange sense of obligation towards Kate. If she wanted to go and see her sister, Krissy wouldn’t mind taking her there.

~

Krissy sat on the bench opposite the house that apparently held a group of werewolves. This wasn’t as shady as the part of Chicago that Krissy lived in, but it was close. The house across the road looked normal enough, but since Kate had pointed it out, Krissy couldn’t help but think that there was something off about the place. The neighbourhood made her uncomfortable in a way she couldn’t describe, and Kate had told her that it was probably because the werewolves in the house opposite them weren’t the only supernatural creatures on the street. The urge to leave was getting stronger with every minute that passed, but Kate had sounded so desperate when she had asked her to come here to see if they could see Tasha – Krissy had to at least get a glimpse of her. There were some other people around, but Krissy was making good use of a newspaper she’d found, and was busily pretending to read it so no one would come up to her.

A man walked past her, and staggered to a stop. Krissy couldn’t smell any alcohol on him, but by the way he was walking, he must have been smashed.

“Hee-ee-ee-y,” he said, drawn out and slurred. Krissy pretended that she didn’t hear him and looked at a bright picture of some random celebrity on her newspaper. He probably wasn’t talking to her. He better not be talking to her. Krissy was very tired, and while her only weapons might be her newspaper and her wits, aided by her new ghost friend, she was ready to Fight.

The man took a few steps towards her, and Krissy reluctantly dragged her eyes up from the page. Even this close, he didn’t smell like he’d been drinking, but he looked smashed. Weird.

“Heeeeey, honeysuckle, you wanna come back to my place? You smeeee-lll goooood. I’d give you a good time lady lavender, really…”

“I’d rather not,” Krissy told him primly, and flicked a page, keeping an eye on him. He was so smashed that she could probably just push him over and walk away, and he’d take a few minutes to just get back up on his feet…

_Uh, Krissy? I think that that’s a vampire._

Of course.

“No,” Krissy said clearly when the vampire took another step towards her. Vampires operated on complete consent, which was why they had to spend so much time seducing their prey – if the prey said no, there wasn’t anything they could do about it. Krissy wasn’t exactly sure why, but she knew it was somehow tied into their latent magic and how they were living and yet not really living. Of course, with the recent trend in vampire romance novels (and she was 100 per cent sure a few vampires were behind the start of that) they weren’t really lacking for willing participants. “No, I don’t want anything from you, I do not want to give anything to you, there is nothing for you here.”

The vampire’s face fell. “Pretty peach, I could do so much for you! So much…”

“I said no, and that’s final,” Krissy told him firmly. “Now you should be on your way.”

The vampire sighed heavily and turned around, stumbling on to wherever he was going to sleep for the rest of the day.

 _Fewf. That was close,_ Kate sighed. _Vampires aren’t anything to mess around with. You’re lucky that one was so hopped up on blood that it couldn’t actually hold a conversation. It must be young as well – they’re normally much more careful about how much blood they consume and how much time they spend wondering around in broad daylight while out of their mind._

“Yeah,” Krissy scoffed. “So lucky. So far today, I’ve been accosted in my home by a goat that probably wants to eat me, found a giant enchanted town that I should never have stepped foot in, met a magical cop, got screwed over by said magical cop when he sided with the goat that wants to eat me, somehow found the only bra in the store that was haunted, and I’m _still_ wearing my dad’s crocs. I should get an award for running in these. Let me tell you, it’s not easy.”

She could basically see Kate’s wince. _Yeah, it hasn’t been the best day for you, has it? I wonder – hey! It’s Tasha!_

Krissy looked over the top of her newspaper to see that there was someone coming out of the house that she had staked out. Said person was young, blonde, and looked just fine. If that was Tasha, then she was safe. Someone called out something from inside the house, and Tasha laughed, the sound floating over to the two of them.

 _Oh,_ Kate said, voice suddenly soft. _She’s okay. That’s good. I’m not really sure how long I’ve been stuck here, but not_ here _. I could have spent years in that store. I know that it definitely felt like years. Never keep an acquaintance with Harold. It’s a bad idea._

“Are… you okay?” Krissy asked. Should Kate… disappear? Fade away? Tasha was fine, so would she just… leave?

 _I think so._ Kate sounded subdued. _She looks alright. Happy._

Krissy shifted her weight. She could almost feel Kate, at the edge of her perception. She wasn’t gone.

_Well. I’m not sure that worked._

“Uh, sorry?” Krissy offered gingerly. What do you say to a maybe stuck here forever ghost?

 _It’s okay,_ Kate said. _It was a long shot anyway. I still don’t really know how I died. Maybe I need to figure that out._

“So, what now?” Krissy asked. She couldn’t just hang out across the road from a house full of werewolves forever.

As if the thought had summoned it, the apartment block that the vampire had stumbled into suddenly burst into sound, the fire alarm going off and wailing loudly through the neighbourhood. Krissy jolted, and across the road Tasha whipped her head around, and Krissy could almost see her scenting the air. Krissy’s pulse skyrocketed – werewolves have a ridiculously good sense of smell. Could she smell that the bra Krissy was wearing belonged to her sister, at one point in time? No, surely not. At least, not from across the road, when there was a building that had at least one vampire inside it wailing to take up her attention.

The vampire’s apartment building was starting to spill people, and Krissy didn’t need Kate to tell her that the majority of them wouldn’t pass their H-test. Some of the vampires still had blood on their lips as they grudgingly made their way out into the sunlight. Krissy didn’t think that they would move out of the building if they didn’t have to, but the trickle of smoke that was coming from the other side of the building told her that it was an actual fire. Fire being one of the things that could actually kill a vampire, they probably weren’t too keen on being anywhere near it.

Krissy blinked, and the vampires mixed into the crowd seemed to melt into the air. The only people milling outside the building were normal humans, most with the glazed look of junkies that were looking for their next fix. A vampire’s bite had evolved so that it provided one of the best highs known to humans. It didn’t take a lot to get a line of people willing to ‘donate’ blood. Most people didn’t need more payment than the high the bite gave them.

The group hovered outside the building while the plume of smoke above it got larger and more obvious. Krissy stood up, ready to leave – if they needed to come back, fair enough, but shit was going down, and she didn’t need to be near it. Vampires did crazy stuff when they were freaked out. Some of the people in front of the building started moving away, and Krissy fell into step behind one of them, using their movement to mask her own.

Someone bumped into her roughly, and Krissy stumbled, trying to keep her balance. Something was shoved into her arms, and Krissy took it out of reflex, despite its awkward shape. _What the –_

Krissy looked around, but the person who had shoved the wrapped object into her arms was gone. It didn’t weigh a lot – probably only two kilos or so. It was long and thin, and wrapped in a loose cloth. Krissy looked around before gingerly opening the top to see what it was.

She had to squint at it for a few seconds before she realised that it was a pommel of a sword. Why? Why did this have to happen to her? Krissy wasn’t anything special – just a kid who didn’t go to school regularly. And now she was running from a goat who looked like a prim secretary to some fancy legal firm, a wizard cop, was wearing a haunted bra, got asked to give blood to a vampire, and now someone had just handed her a sword. It probably wasn’t even midday yet.

 _The sword is magical_ , Kate told her. Krissy snorted. Like she needed the ghost to tell her that. Some vampire had probably been keeping it on hand and didn’t want the cops to find it when they came to investigate the fire. They were probably planning on finding her and the sword again later and killing her to get it back. Awesome.

Krissy turned to put the sword down on the bench behind her, but hesitated. What if the guy that came to collect the sword didn’t believe her when she said it was here? If she could just give them the sword, maybe they’d leave her alone.

She tucked the sword under one arm and headed off to follow the people who were leaving the building. If Kate was still here, that meant that there was something else keeping her here, and they wouldn’t be able to find it here. They’d have to find out how Kate died, probably. And she only knew one cop would might be able to understand and willing to help. After all, he was the one who’d started all this by taking her to the store that Kate was trapped in.

Krissy wasn’t sure how to find Dean Winchester. But she was pretty sure Dean Winchester knew how to find her.

~

There was a blue box on her doorstep. Krissy stared at it for a long time from across the road. She’d decided on the way here that the sword was a lot heavier than she’d thought at first and now the awkward shape of it was killing her back, but she hadn’t put it down. She wasn’t quite sure why.

After everything that had happened so far today, the fact that there was a box on the doorstep of her apartment building was making her deeply suspicious. Maybe yesterday she would have just accepted it and stepped over it while walking into her apartment, but her neighbourhood wasn’t a nice one. The box looked innocent enough just sitting there, but it was still there – anything remotely interesting that was lying around was usually snapped up within a few seconds. Krissy could see at least three people on the street that she knew were prone to lifting things off doorsteps if they weren’t attended very quickly. She tracked one of them as they passed her door, and didn’t even give the innocuous package a glance. She gulped. Magic. She was sure of it.

_I can’t feel anything from over here, but it might just be because we’re too far away. There’s too much negative energy around here. I don’t like it._

Well, she didn’t like living here anyway, but hey. Poor people couldn’t be choosers.

“I’m going to have to go over there, aren’t I?” Krissy asked despondently, not even needing an answer from Kate. The package was destined for her. Why? Who knew. She was beginning to think this entire day was some weird, too real dream, and that she’d wake up in her bed any second. But no; it just kept dragging on and on.

_Maybe just get a little closer so I can get a read on it._

It was as good a plan as any. Krissy crossed the road, angling so she could still see her front step. The box wasn’t decorative – just a plain blue. The particular shade of blue reminded her of something, but after thinking about it for a few long seconds, she couldn’t place it.

_It seems… normal? I’m not sure. Maybe you shouldn’t go any closer._

Even her ghostly companion couldn’t tell what it was. Krissy took another, hesitant step closer.

The box exploded.

Of fucking course.

It was now a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

There wasn’t a boom or a shock wave – a sudden cloud of blue smoke enveloped Krissy and she coughed, waving her hands around her head to try and clear it before she breathed too much of it in. She tried to step back, but her feet were stuck in place. And her body. Actually, everything but her hands and head.

The light blue smoke cleared in a few seconds, and Krissy tried to jerk away as she saw someone step towards her in the low light. As the smoke drifted away, it formed a barrier about five metres across, with her and the man inside it.

Dean Winchester did not look happy to see her. Krissy winced as her ears popped, and Dean waved his staff and said a few words in a weird language. The blue smoke crystallised and Krissy shuddered when she saw that no one outside the barrier of blue was moving. Their colour had faded away as well – it was like looking at one of the old forties films, black and white and blurry.

“Krissy,” Dean said. “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting outside your door? Deneb Algedi is still trying to track you down by tracing you through the city.” He eyes the sword still tucked under her arm suspiciously. “Krissy, Deneb Algedi needs to talk to you, but I suppose I need to talk to you first.”

Krissy tried to shrug, and grimaced when she couldn’t move. Dean waved his staff and muttered something in some language, and she could move again. The blue wall around them didn’t move. Krissy wrapped her arms around herself and stared at Dean defiantly.

 _Don’t do anything to antagonise him. I need him to know what happened to me!_ Kate sounded desperate. She should be. Dean was likely the only person who would take her ghostly ass seriously.

“What?” Krissy grated out. The magical wall was freaking her out, and the silent people surrounding them felt like they were staring at her, stiff and glaring. “What is happening today? Why is there a goat following me? Why did a vampire give me a sword? Why is this happening to me?”

Dean looked at her for a long time. Krissy itched to pace, but she held herself still – Dean was a wizard. The blue barrier was evidence enough of that. The blue butterfly fluttering around his head was just a confirmation of it. Only wizards had spirits.

“Krissy,” Dean said, and his voice is softer, suddenly. “Deneb Algedi didn’t need to tell me why he was after you. His mere presence is more than enough for me to know who you are.” Krissy bared her teeth at him and hugged herself tighter. “When’s your birthday? A few weeks ago? Or in a few weeks?”

What? Why was he asking such weird questions?

 _Didn’t you say that this Deneb Algedi said he was a Capricornus? Aren’t you a Capricorn?_ Krissy had told Kate everything while they’d been walking around, and the ghost had been just as puzzled as Krissy had been.

“It was my birthday yesterday,” Krissy said after it was apparent that Dean wasn’t going to say anything until she’d answered him. “I’m sixteen now.”

Dean’s face crumpled for a moment before it smoothed out, professional and distant. “Krissy, Deneb Algedi is an agent of Capricorn. You were born under Capricorn, so that means she can claim you as her own, just like she did me. It’s not easy, but it does offer some protection in our world, so I’d take him up on his offer if I were you.”

“His offer for _what?_ ” Krissy cried out, confused. What was happening? She didn’t understand!

Dean tapped his staff against the sidewalk, and the blue wall around them disintegrated and disappeared. Around them, movement recommenced as if it had never stopped. Standing right behind Dean, where the wall had been, was the creature that had invaded her house this morning. His hair was slightly ruffled, but apart from that he looked just as put together as he had when he had been sitting at her kitchen bench.

“Miss Chambers, I must insist,” Deneb Algedi said. “This is for you.”

He held out the envelope again. Krissy stared at it before taking a step forward and claiming it with the hand she wasn’t using to hold the sword. The paper was thick and heavy, and Krissy knew that whatever it said would be handwritten. She didn’t open it, choosing instead to look at the wizard and goat person in front of her.

“What is this?” She was proud of herself, how her voice didn’t shake. She could feel Kate’s approval at the back of her mind.

Dean crooked one corner of his mouth up in a tiny smile. “You haven’t worked it out yet? Let me make it simple.” He took a breath. “Kristine Chambers, I, Dean Winchester, journeyman wizard and ambassador of the Council of Wizards to the New York Police Department, hereby recognise you as belonging of Talent, and thus deserving of the right to join the ranks of magically inclined people and creatures of Earth and the Four Realms.” Krissy gaped at him, and Dean’s smile grew bigger. “You’re a wizard, Krissy. Welcome to the club.”

A wizard.

Krissy blinked, and everything seemed to slow down. Her heart beat echoed in her ears, far too loud and close all at once. She breathed out, feeling the air rasp against her throat. In front of her, white magic coalesced, spinning and whirring to form a tight, white ball. The ball hovered for a long second, and then expanded softly, growing limbs and defining itself into a shape. The spirit dropped down lightly, and Krissy stared at the white cat that had appeared in front of her.

 _Shit,_ Kate said, but Krissy could hear the awe in her voice. Krissy wasn’t sure she could echo it – she just felt numb. She was a wizard. How was this happening.

The cat started licking its paw and rubbing it over its head. Krissy felt the sudden and urgent need to sit down.

Dean plucked the sword out of her arms and sat down on the pavement next to her while Deneb Algedi looked on wordlessly. Krissy put her head in her hands and fought the urge to cry while the cat walked around in a circle and sat, its tail tucking itself neatly over its paws.

Holy shit. She was a _wizard._


	2. Captain Annie Hawkins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happens the same day that Take Flight ends on

The door to Annie’s office was shut. That in itself wasn’t unusual, but it made Dean more nervous than he already was. Annie was welcoming and put up with him and his magic most of the time, but he knew that her father had been killed by a rouge wizard when she was young. They’d never talked about it, but Dean was ninety percent sure that it was the reason why she’d joined the police force in the first place. So while they got along well enough, Dean didn’t take their relationship for granted. He knew that he could be given a lot worse partners than Charlie, whose mother was a wizard. Annie could have paired him up with Gordon when he first got here, and Dean would have had to deal with Gordon’s bullshit. Annie made sure that his opinions were respected and taken into consideration, even when most of the precinct would prefer that nothing supernatural ever crossed their doors and wanted to live in blissful ignorance of the fact that there were multiple sightings of kelpies in the Chicago River every day. They weren’t alone, either. Dean had heard that up to thirty percent of the general population of America refused to deal with anything magical or even admit that they existed. Dean thought that thinking along those lines was colossally stupid, and would probably lead to deaths that would have been prevented if people had just been taught some basic rules of the magical worlds. After all, Earth was just the third realm – there were four others out there where there were nearly no humans at all.

And he was stalling. Dean sighed to himself and knocked on Annie’s door, rapping three times to make sure that she would hear him. If she was in a meeting he could count his blessings and leave off explaining for another hour or so. Although that just might make it worse. If Annie found out before he had the chance to tell her… Dean shuddered at the thought.

Cas didn’t have to ask him to be the new delegate, but he did. Dean didn’t have to accept the position, but he did. Cas said that there’s something that Dean has to do with his Clan Leader and fair enough, but that meant that Dean needed to tell his employers. Both of them.

The Council didn’t convene over the issue (even though Dean felt that it was kinda an important one). If three Council members passed a preliminary issue and no Council member opposed it, then it was passed without having to go to the whole Council. It streamlined the process of most issues, and let the Council have time to debate matters that they wanted to. Dean had received his submitted report back within an hour, which was unusually quickly, but his father had scribbled on the bottom of the page to let him know why.

_‘Got this passed. Good job on making connections. You might make it out of being blacklisted if you keep working at it for another fifty years. Sooner than I expected.’_

Thanks a lot, Dad. Really. Dean appreciated it.

The signatories on the report were Bobby, Ellen and John. The three of them usually supported each other, and represented nearly a third of the wizard population, which they usually cited as their reason for banding together so often. Dean knew that the actual reason that they do is because they’ve all known each other for a long time, and while they might argue between themselves, they know that to pass some things that they in particular want, they need wide support. Each had their own way of looking at things, and issues that they were concerned with. John worried about the other realms and how other magical creatures could impact upon wizards and humans in general – he looked at the bigger picture, and didn’t worry about the individuals who might get lost in the crowd of his larger ideas. Ellen was all for the little people, those who were underrepresented and the small issues that could be fixed easily to give people a better way to live. She was a PR person, and represented the Council at formal events if needed. Bobby was a mix between the two, and stabilised their ideas. He dealt with big problems on a small scale, and had little time for idiots who wasted his or other people’s time.

John had likely talked him up and gotten Ellen and Bobby to sign it. The other Council members probably hadn’t been thrilled that Dean had been the one chosen – after all, he was still technically classed as a ‘blackened’ wizard. He was known to have used black magic, but he’d been tried by the Council and it had been decided that he’d been forced to use it in self-defence. Krissy was close to holding that status, but her breaches had been grey magic rather than black magic, so technically she wasn’t, which meant that she was in a better place than Dean was. She could probably write off her offences as teenage fuck ups when she was older, which was what Dean was hoping for.

While the Council members might not like that he was building his own network, since Cas had chosen him, there wasn’t much they could do about it. They couldn’t influence Cas or any other aegyl, and the opportunity of having any influence in aegyl matters had probably won over their reluctance to see him in this position.

So that only left the CPD and they’d be swayed if Annie approved. Any additional connection to other races or realms was something that they always welcomed, and would be glad to welcome. But if Annie brought up an issue…

Dean shook his head. There wasn’t a reason in particular that he thought Annie might disapprove. She was very forward thinking when it came to magical discrimination, and she’d probably welcome with open arms the opportunity to work more closely with the aegyl. He knew that she ground her teeth over the cases that they had to shelve because they fell under aegyl authority.

The door in front of him opened, and Annie looked relieved when she saw him.

“The detectives have been hounding me about getting a new coffee machine all morning,” she confessed as she stepped back to let him into her office. “I feel bad telling them that the department can barely pay their wages, let alone get a new coffee machine. I’m pretty certain that they’re all pooling funds out there and they’re going to want me to contribute.” She made her way back over to her desk and sat down, turning her computer off as Dean hovered near the doorway, not wanting to wreck too much havoc with her devices. “So, did things go well at the Flightcentre? Everything tied up so we can close the file?” Dean hesitated, and Annie groaned. “Seriously? You’ve got something for me to deal with today?”

“Well, it’s something good?” Dean offered tentatively. Annie perked up, and her expectant expression prompted him to continue. “Castiel offered me the place of the human delegate, since he’s in charge of the Flightcentre now. That basically means that if the aegyl in Chicago have a problem with humans that they can’t solve by themselves, they’ll call on me. And since Chicago is a pretty big place, and since Cas’s Clan is really influential, the other smaller Clans in the area will call on me as well. So I’ll be like, aegyl speed dial.” Which didn’t sound so great now that he thought about it. Why did he agree to this again?

Annie folded her hands under her head and lowered her eyebrows. “Alright… I think I get it. You’ll act as an official liaison, pretty much?” She waited until Dean nodded. “Why did Castiel ask you?”

Dean shrugged one shoulder. “He said that Anna’s delegate didn’t want the job anymore and that he needed someone he knew that he could trust. Since he liked how I handled Anna’s investigation, he said that he could trust me and that if I wanted the spot it was mine.”

“So why did you say yes? I thought you didn’t particularly like aegyl.”

Dean bit his lip. “I didn’t, no. But then this investigation…” Just say Cas, it’ll be truer. “I’ve grown to appreciate them more.” And that was pretty much an outright lie. He’d grown to appreciate how dickish most of them were, for sure. “And Cas offered it to me, and I’m flattered that he thinks that I’d do a good job at it. It sounds interesting, and I honestly wouldn’t mind doing the job, even though it sounds like it’s probably going to be a pain in the ass. It means that I could probably get more case files in here open when the aegyl are concerned, and get some inside knowledge about preternatural events that might be going on that we need to be aware of. Overall I think it’s a sound investment of my time and since the Council have already agreed, I just need you and the CPD to sign off and then everything should all go smoothly.”

Annie pursed her lips. “Well, it sounds like you have everything under control. If you really think that it’s a good idea, then I’ll go along with you on it. Just know that I can’t offer you a raise to go along with all the trouble you’re going to get.”

Dean smiled at her, feeling the clenched ball in his chest relax somewhat. “Yeah, I really do think it’s a good idea. Thanks, Annie.”

Annie leaned back in her chair. “Thank me by going out there and telling everyone so they’re distracted from plotting about their coffee. I’ve got paperwork to fill out and it doesn’t do itself.”

Dean was still smiling as he left the Captain’s office.


	3. The Flightcentre

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place a week after Take Flight

Castiel threaded his way through the hallways of the rookery, the dragons in their roosts softly asleep, some snoring, others letting out puffs of fire occasionally. He was walking through the part of the rookery where the dragons that sleep at night are – the nocturnal dragons are in another wing of the Flightcentre.

“Check on Niylah,” Castiel said in Enochian as he walked past one of the hands. The young aegyl ducked her head, her gold wings tucked tight to her sides as she carefully glanced into one of the roosts of the expecting mares. Movement in this part of the stable was restricted at this time of night, as Castiel wanted the dragons to be left alone to sleep as much as possible. A cranky dragon meant bad things for caretakers in the morning, and that was something that no one wanted. Castiel had to answer for any deaths on the property, and he didn’t want any anyway.

There were only a few low oil lamps lighting the hallways as Castiel prowled through them, checking all his dragons. Drawn to the hallway where Grace was, Castiel let her know he was coming with a soft mental touch. She was awake, and as he drew closer, could hear her shuffling about. Her dragonlings were making trouble of themselves, and were starting to leave her for longer and longer periods of time. None of them were bonded, but Castiel had his eye on one of them for Claire. He didn’t know if she could cope with a dragon of her own yet, which was the only reason he hadn’t invited her to bond with one. There were currently two out of Grace’s five dragonlings in her stable with her, one of them on her neck and one chewing absently on her wing. Grace gave him a mental shove that let him know that she was more than ready to push all the dragonlings out of her space.

 _Give them another week or so,_ Castiel chastised her gently. _They are young and still learning._ He let himself into her stable and rescued her from the dragonling chewing on her wing. The young dragon turned her attention to him, battering at his mental walls in a confused flurry, but quieted when he started scratching under her chin.

 _Gah. She’ll chew at anything she can see._ Grace sounded despondently proud of her offspring, and Castiel smiled at the dragonling softly.

_Do you think she’ll be a good match for Claire?_

_Clear-Bright is still a hatchling herself,_ Grace cautioned. The dragonlings often chose their own names, but they were still a bit young for that yet, so in its place Grace just used a mental picture of the dragonling to show who she was talking about. Claire she referred to as Clear-Bright. All the dragons had their own names for the aegyl that didn’t correspond to what the aegyls called themselves.

 _Maybe,_ Castiel responded eventually. _I just want her to have someone to rely on. And I know that your fledgling would be safe with her._

 _I would not advise bonding with one of my fledglings yet,_ Grace said, voice firm. _They are too young, as is your fledgling. You should wait, brother. It is too soon._

 _You’re probably right,_ Castiel sighed.

 _As I always am,_ Grace replied, smug. Castiel absently kept scratching under the jaw of the small dragon still curled around his arm. He carefully unwrapped the dragon, making sure not to scratch himself on the sharp scales covering her. He put her back against Grace, and her scratching session must have sent her off to sleep, because she just curled in against her mother instead of wriggling around to find something else to play with. He felt Grace’s wordless sigh of gratitude, and Castiel left her there. His dragon needed as much sleep as the rest of them did, and he wouldn’t want the aegyl who woke her up in the morning to get flamed just because Castiel had been keeping her awake.

Most of this wing of the Flightcentre was dark and quiet, so Castiel headed to the areas where he knew there would be more light. The heavy obsidian that separated the nocturnal and diurnal dragons came down to a small entrance way that he could barely squeeze through. There was a long tunnel following it where his wings brushed against the walls, no matter how tightly he kept them to his sides. At the end there was another door, which led into an antechamber before finally opening out into the area where the dragons were kept.

The nocturnal rookery was very different to the diurnal rookery. There weren’t any oil lamps lighting the way, and Castiel had to let his eyes adjust to the low light. The nocturnal dragons lived inside the hill that bordered the Flightcentre – it had been built where it was on purpose, so that the hill could be dug into and hollowed out for the dragons who didn’t like the light.

The only light was coming from the spiralling runes etched into the walls, letting out a red light that the dragons didn’t mind. It cast everything into a strange colour, everything turning black or grey. A hume probably couldn’t have navigated by it, but aegyl needed less light then they did to see. Castiel shook his feathers and knew that his eyes would be glowing slightly in the low light.

Activity was much more pronounced in this part of the Flightcentre. Dragons were constantly being taken out of their roosts and having the slight saddle that aegyls needed for balance strapped on them. Castiel manoeuvred his way around the activity, nodding to the few aegyl who dipped their head to him as he passed along. Most were far too involved with trying to keep their dragon pleased to even notice him.

Castiel’s relationship with Grace wasn’t all that common – there were generally more dragons than aegyl that worked at a Flightcentre, and of those that did work there, few were generally suited to bonding with a dragon. A bonded dragon only allowed their bonded to ride them, which meant that you would have to come into the Flightcentre nearly every day, or the dragon wouldn’t get the exercise that they needed. Castiel was lucky at the moment – since Grace was still taking care of her few dragonlings, she didn’t need to fly anywhere near as often as she usually did. It meant that he could spend the extra time cementing his position as the next flock-leader as well as taking care of the paperwork needed for the position. It was generally the administrators in Chicago that needed everything sorted out – aegyls ran their businesses differently to humes. Most things were either gathered yourself or shared collectively. Castiel still remembered when he was introduced to human society and how confused he’d been at the concept of money. If he was being honest with himself, he could admit that most of the time he still didn’t understand it at all – but like with most human related things, he simply accepted it and moved on. Trying to examine and understand every part of every thing that they did would be too exhausting for him, or any aegyl.

Castiel kept an eye out for the aegyl who weren’t involved with a dragon, who saw him, and who didn’t bow their head. Some aegyl were having trouble adapting to him as the flock-leader, and who still thought that he was behind Anna’s death. His chest tightened and his breath caught for half a second as he thought of his predecessor. Most of the time, he couldn’t believe that she was gone. He had assumed that when he took up this position, Anna would be in the wings, coaxing everything into line and giving him advice where he needed it. Not that she would be… gone. _Dead_ , he made himself think fiercely. She was dead and gone, and he had to deal with the present.

The reason he was wandering the halls of the Flightcentre and checking in on things he knew didn’t need to be checked in on was sitting on his desk in his ( _Anna’s_ ) office. They were the cases that she’d been rejecting, who had been applying almost nonstop since it had become common knowledge that she was dead. Anna had a reputation as a hardliner, someone who would take one look at you and refuse to sell a dragon, even if you gave her all the riches in the world for it. She had cared for the dragon, deeply and truly, and Castiel wondered if he could meet her standards. Their financial situation _was_ in trouble – Castiel wished that he knew what Anna was going to do about that. There were a lot of things he wished he knew what Anna was going to talk about, but wishing and wanting and sighing after something that could never happen was idiotic. Anna wasn’t going to be answering any of his questions, so he was just going to have to deal with all the issues that she’d left behind on his own. It wasn’t like he was alone – he had Grace, and he had Balthazar and Sariel here at the Flightcentre, and Gabriel back at home. Claire was here. He wasn’t alone.

Reluctantly, he made his way towards his office. His wings were drooping with tiredness, but the paperwork wouldn’t wait. The Flightcentre was currently balanced on several loans, and he had to find a way to repay at least two of them before they all found out that there was very little real money keeping everything afloat… Castiel sighed as he sat down behind the desk. The papers in front of him looked very final. How could he sign away dragons that Anna fought to keep? He knew that they wouldn’t have the best treatment in some of the places that were applying for dragons.

 _The flock is the most important thing,_ Grace murmured to him. _And that means_ all _of the flock. If the weak members have to be sacrificed for the whole, then they are too weak to belong in the first place._

Castiel rubbed his hands over his face. Grace didn’t understand. Selling the dragons felt the same as if he were selling another aegyl – he was responsible for their freedom and safety. Humes didn’t understand dragons, but the Clan Leader had decided that they needed the money. Hate burned at the back of his throat with nowhere to go as he stared at the papers lying in front of him.

He picked through them, not even bothering to read through the applications of the places he knew weren’t going to gain his approval, no matter how well written they were.

When he was done, there were only three left on his desk. Two were unknowns – he’d have someone check them out in the morning, do a flyby of their facilities to see what was there. The last one was the main racing track – Castiel read it through before stamping it. He knew that all the dragons there were given the highest standards of care, and they paid well. He’d send it off with a messenger when there was daylight in the sky.

He looked at the large pile of disregarded applications and then stood up. He picked up the pile of papers and fed them, one by one, into the smouldering fire in the hearth. When they were all gone he felt a little bit better, but also had a much clearer idea as to why Anna would have resorted to selling dragon parts on the side to supplement their finances.

Dragon parts were often only used in black magic, which was why their trade and use had been made illegal in most parts of America, Europe, Australasia and Asia. Castiel knew that the idea of using anything not given willingly with the full consent of a dragon would likely incur exile as a penalty, at a minimum. For abusing her position as flock-leader, Anna would probably have been recalled and killed. But she had risked it, because she didn’t want to sell any of the dragons to places where they would suffer.

Castiel leaned down and flicked open the book that held all of the Flightcentre’s payments and income. He traced the numbers with a finger, looking at all the income that wasn’t marked with a dragon’s name. Over the years, Anna had received a lot of money for her efforts. It was probably all bloodied money, made from extortion and racketeering, but she had taken it. Anna had cared for her flock above all else – and that generally meant humans as well.

Castiel closed the book with a sigh. He couldn’t follow the path that Anna had taken. But there was no denying that the Flightcentre would need more money, and fast. He looked at the three piles of paper on his desk, and shut his eyes.

Castiel stood up and headed towards the door, picking up his flying jacket on the way there. He was tired and more than tired. The last time he’d gotten more than five hours sleep consecutively was before he’d taken over Anna’s job. He was living off caramel lattes and Grace propping him up whenever he felt like he was going to slide off into sleep during something important. There was just too much to organise – and until Dean’s position was finalised, he had to deal with all of the outside issues as well.

It had nearly been a week since he’d last talked to the wizard. Dean had said that he needed to get everything sorted with the Council of Wizards and the CPD, which Castiel thought was fair. But he hadn’t heard anything from him, and it was starting to make him nervous. What if Dean said that he couldn’t do it? Castiel had no other hume contacts that he knew beyond business engagements, and the position Dean was going to fill often meant that he had to go above and beyond, effort wise. Stressing about Dean wasn’t helping him not stress about everything else that he was trying to deal with.

He did up the last button on his coat, and spread his wings, leaping upwards into the air. The cool night wind helped him gain a bit of altitude, but it was mostly just hard work until he reached a good height. There were several dragons floating around, both above and below him in the air, and he kept them at the back of his mind as he wheeled through the sky, hoping that some hard exercise would help him get to sleep sooner. He pulled his wings in close and dived for a few seconds before snapping them out and soaring, trying to clear his mind.

He could almost imagine that he can see the sun in the sky by the time he touches the ground with his feet. There are a few rooms near the rookery, for aegyl who are looking after the dragons that need constant care over a long period of time. He’s been sleeping there ever since he took over the place of flock-leader, both because he thinks that it’s good to be where everyone knows he can be found and because he doesn’t have the time to fly to his own roost and be back at the Flightcentre if an emergency occurs. He might just be using those excuses because he didn’t want to leave and have anything happen while he was gone, but he knew that it was probably more because of his underlying anxiety that something would happen and he won’t be here to deal with it. Castiel took in a deep breath as he closed the heavy door that lead into the small corridor. The doors that were closed meant that there were aegyl resting inside, so he chose a roost that didn’t smell particularly of anyone and settled down on it, trying to still his racing mind to sleep.

~

When he left, there are doors that were closed when he came in are still shut. He didn’t know if that was because the occupants hadn’t left or new ones had arrived. Either way, he tried to slink past them quietly, not wanting to disrupt the rest of anyone who might desperately need it.

 _You desperately need it, brother,_ Grace rumbled to him, reproach clear in her tone.

 _Not even going to bother saying good morning first?_ Castiel answered tiredly. The room where all the Flightcentre aegyl could get food was the furthest building from the dragons, but was still built out of thick obsidian and stone. It was meant to double as a place of refuge in an emergency – there were no windows and the doors that led inside were all small. Castiel had to pull his wings in going through them.

Inside, there was the general chaos that he thought occurred everywhere when you put together people and food. It might have been quieter than a hume gathering, and more feathers were definitely involved, but Castiel liked to think that aegyl and humans shared more than they didn’t. Respectful head nods followed him as he walked through the tables on the ground level, where the food was served. Having wings, aegyls could perch where they wanted, and that led to their buildings being structured differently from hume buildings. Multiple levels both above and below meant that more space could be utilised through hanging tables, bringing more aegyl into a smaller space.

Castiel was waiting for his customary latte and banana bread combo when he felt an arm brush up against him. He looked down to see his niece staring seriously at the bread options, studiously not looking at him. Her pale cream wings were ruffled, and she looked about as tired as he felt.

“Long night?” Castiel asked, trying to avoid letting a touch of amusement enter his voice. He’d been giving Claire night shifts, to make sure that those around wouldn’t think that he was favouring her at all. Aegyl were by nature made to function during the day, so anyone put on at night were generally either there because they’d been unlucky enough to get rostered on, were there as a reprimand but not fully being punished, or because they were bonded to a nocturnal dragon. Claire was probably coming off a shift, and was about to head back to their roost. Castiel shared his roost with Claire, but they’d hardly been there at the same time over the two weeks that she’d been here.

“I hate everything,” Claire moaned, flicking out her wings to try and resettle them. Now that Castiel was looking, they seemed a bit… burnt.

“Did you get flamed?” He asked, slightly worried. If it was serious then she wouldn’t be standing here – she’d be in the med ward. But as she was just looking slightly disgruntled, she’d probably ducked most of it. Claire was starting to get in the swing of things, but any experienced flock-carer could have probably easily avoided the blast that she narrowly dodged.

“Only a little bit,” Claire grumbled. “I’m getting something to eat and then I’m going to sleep. I’m so tired I can’t believe there are people who do this for longer shifts than the one I have. I’m honestly just so damn tired. Ugh.”

Castiel leaned a bit closer to her and she pressed against him, seeking comfort in his warmth before he stepped forward to receive both their orders. Claire insisted that he eat with her, so he followed her to a table at ground level, which he was thankful for, because he didn’t think that he’d be able to find the energy to fly at the moment.

Claire chattered on about the dragons she was caring for and Raziel, who was the aegyl that was watching over her as she learned how to deal with the dragons. Raziel cared for the entirety of the night shift, and had the third most authority in the Flightcentre. First was Castiel, who took care of the wide reaching events and dealt with the outside world and sales. Second was Sariel, who micromanaged everything that went on inside the Flightcentre. Uriel and Raziel were tied for third – Uriel took care of the diurnal dragons and Raziel the nocturnal dragons. Under them were all the managers of the individual departments. Castiel was hoping that Claire could gain favour with Raziel and learn from his managing skills so that he could promote her to that position if anything happened with Raziel, or he found a good reason to fire Uriel. The only problem was that it would probably take at least ten years for her to gain the experience necessary for him to promote her without it being regarded as favouritism. If he did if before that, there would be many other candidates who would have more experience than her. Castiel didn’t want to put up with Uriel for another ten years. Just thinking about it was making his head hurt.

 _Don’t worry, I’ll just eat him and we can all move on with our lives,_ Grace said cheerfully in the back of his head. Castiel smiled a little at it.

He saw Claire off, standing in the courtyard as she winged her way towards their shared roost. He hoped she was keeping it clean. That might be the excuse he needed to go back there – what did a seventeen year old know about keeping nests clean? Probably nothing. He didn’t want to go back there and find that it was completely destroyed and Claire was living in it as if nothing had happened. He sighed and headed into the stables, checking up on all the dragons and going to find Sariel. She was giving out assignments for the day in the main hallway of the stables when he did, her voice loud and cutting through all the small chatter that went on around her as she gave out orders for each aegyl to complete for the day. She frowned slightly when she saw him and flicked her long blonde hair over her shoulder as she walked towards him, away from most of the gathered aegyl.

“You have anything in particular you need doing?” She asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes,” Castiel told her. He gave her the two addresses that he needed someone to go and look at, as well as to deliver the message to the racing stables that their request for another dragon was approved. She nodded along and scribbled what he said down on a small notebook that she carried, blue eyes squinting as she tried to make out what her scrawled handwriting was saying. Enochian was never a nice language to write in in the first place – Castiel had found himself using English more and more often, especially when dealing with records that might be released to any hume authority. That, and the fact that only about a quarter of the aegyl population could read English, keeping his notes from prying eyes. Enochian was used in the rookery. Words in Enochian were often very long and weren’t meant to be written down, so while Sariel was trying to read what she had written, Castiel was looking at it and thinking of the shorter human words that could replace what was there. He knew that Sariel’s grasp of English wasn’t very good, so he couldn’t fault her for not writing in it, but it was still odd to see written notes and not have them be in English. All the paperwork that he dealt with was headed to outside the Flightcentre, which meant it was all in English. If Castiel had any lingering problems with the language, then they were well and truly gone with all the writing and reading he’d been doing lately.

She eventually crossed something off and scribbled another few words above it. “All right, that’s settled. Anything else?”

“No, thank you. Get back to organising – it’s what you do best.”

She flashed a smile at him, and Castiel turned away, something burning at the back of his throat as he walked back through the halls of the rookery, the gathered aegyl making room for him and dipping their heads slightly. She would have made a good mate, and he knew that no one would have been surprised if they had become a couple.

_You know that she wasn’t for you, brother. Why do you keeping returning to it, like a kill gone rotten? There’s no point, and you simply detract from the now. And you’re annoying me with your repeated thoughts on the subject._

Castiel shook Grace from his head and turned from going to see her. He didn’t need to be thinking about that now. Not when he still had so much to do.

Castiel was just reading through the last pages on the new human-supernatural treaty to use it as a reference for a potential client, when there was a knock on his door. Gratefully, he looked up and called for whoever it was to come in.

He wasn’t prepared for it to be Dean. The wizard looked healthy, colour on his cheeks and a sparkle in his eye. His grey cloak rippled slightly with power, the symbolism of it gaining its own type of magic. He didn’t have his staff, but Castiel doubted that it was the only thing that he could channel magic through. His blue soul-spirit was perched on his ear, its misty blue wings opening and closing slowly.

“Good afternoon, Cas,” Dean started. He sat down in the chair opposite Castiel’s, leaning backwards and grinning at him. “How are things?”

The vitality in his magic was edging on too much for Castiel’s overtired senses. Why had he asked Dean to do this for him again? Castiel wasn’t sure he could deal with the _presence_ of Dean, let alone work with him for an extended period of time. Their magic was compatible, and his drained resources cried out for a rest, to be replenished by the wizard. Castiel took a deep breath and shut them down, walling out Grace alongside them.

“Cas?” Dean asked, voice tinged with worry. “You alright?”

“Yes,” Castiel replied. “I am simply surprised to see you. I was beginning to think that you’d rejected my offer to become the Novak Clan’s delegate.”

Dean winced. “Yeah, sorry about that. Things were pretty smooth with the Council, but things dragged on forever when I tried to run it through the CPD. If Annie hadn’t been pushing for it, I doubt that it would have been looked at for another month or two. But everything’s good now, so you’re stuck with me.” He grinned again, and the humanness of the gesture made Castiel blink. No one smiled that much if they were an aegyl.

“Well,” Castiel started, resisting the urge to lean forward. “I’m glad. There are a lot of things that you can help with, that I’ve been putting off until I had you here to deal with them.” He sighed softly, shuffling some of the papers on his desk, trying to arrange them in an order that made any sense to him. They swam for a moment in front of him as his eyes fluttered, and then Grace shoved through his mental barriers to poke him awake and keep him from falling off his chair.

 _Brother! You need rest, and you need it_ now. _You can’t keep this up._ She paused before continuing. _You cannot keep doing this. It isn’t good for the flock, for the leader to be so absentminded. You need to sleep._

Castiel shook his head, only to find Dean hovering next to him, holding his arm. Castiel flushed, jerking himself out of Dean’s grip instinctively. Dean took a step back, his face falling into a guarded expression, soul-spirit flapping around his head vigorously, somehow conveying concern.

“Are you alright?” Dean asked, eyebrows lowering. “You seem… kinda out of it, Cas.”

Castiel bit back the urge to snap that it was none of Dean’s business, because as of the moment he had walked into Castiel’s office, it had _become_ Dean’s business. Flock-leaders and their delegates often had very close relationships, and Castiel collapsing because he was working himself into the ground would count as a valid concern on Dean’s part. He had a right to be concerned for Castiel’s health.

“I am… tired,” Castiel eventually admitted.

Dean’s face turned to a look of understanding. “Yeah, I get it. Working long nights and not sleeping is the easy thing to do after someone dies. I get it. I’ve been there. But just because it’s the easy thing to do, doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. In fact, I’m pretty sure that it means that it’s even _more_ important to fight against it. I didn’t know Anna, but I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t want you to be working so hard you’re collapsing at your desk.”

Castiel looked up at Dean after it was clear he was done speaking. He could feel Grace’s firm approval in the back of his mind.

Castiel looked down at the scattered papers on his desk and abruptly decided that it could all wait. There was nothing critical there – he’d asked Sariel to take care of most of the problems this morning, and there wasn’t much he could do until they came in. Dean needed briefing on his position, and everyone needed to get used to the hume being here, where usually there were only aegyl. If that wasn’t a good call for taking a break, he doubted he’d ever find one.

“You’re probably right,” Castiel sighed, standing up and shaking his wings out before resettling them loosely on his back. He stood up and didn’t look at the papers on his desk as he swept out of the room, Dean following behind him.

“Well, I’m glad you’re recognising that already,” Dean said, but it had taken a second too long, and Castiel read how unsettled he was in the words. He was surprised that Castiel had listened to him.

“Dean,” Castiel said. He turned to a stop in the middle of the corridor, and Dean stumbled to a stop right in front of him, hardly a breath between them. Castiel stared into Dean’s eyes, watched as he licked his lip and tilted his head slightly. “I don’t know what you expected from this role, but I doubt you’re going to get it. We have to be partners from now on. If we have any chance of working together at all, then we need to be honest and open with each other. Otherwise this will just fall apart. You’re right. I’ve been neglecting my sleep patterns because I _can’t_ sleep, because all I see is Anna in my dreams. But I can’t continue to function like this, so I’m going to get some sleep, and then I’m going to come back here and we’re going to go through all of the things I need you to do, and then we’re going to ‘kick some ass.’ I believe that is a human saying?”

Dean’s mouth is half hanging open. “Uh,” he starts. “Yeah, that’s a saying. Alrighty, then. We’ll do that, and then we’ll just come back here. You got a place to crash?”

Castiel thought of his nest, probably a disaster with his sleeping niece there. He didn’t want to wake Claire up. He slowly shook his head, and Dean shrugged. “You can come and sleep at my place, if you’d like. It’s quiet, mostly.”

Dean was smiling, and it seemed like he wouldn’t mind. Castiel’s heart jumped a little, and he found himself nodding.

“Great! Well, uh, let’s go then.” Dean turned around, and Castiel blinked. It seemed like the only option was to follow Dean as he walked, aegyl trailing after hume.

It seemed more natural than Castiel might like to admit.


	4. Gold Things, Gold Wings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happens the same day as The Flightcentre

The clouds were just beginning to drip, fat rain droplets falling down to make dark circles on the sidewalk. The crush of people hurrying through the crowded streets of Chicago sped up a little, feet _tap tap tapping_ on concrete, a hurried push here, an aggravated sound there. The echoing crash as someone tripped out of sight.

Krissy was waiting for her mentor. Kate was tucked into her pocket, and the ghost had little problem mumbling in her ear, saying how useless this all was. Krissy had over a year’s experience ignoring her, to which she now did with little trouble.

The thing was, if she and Dean didn’t decide on a place to meet up at, she couldn’t really ever find him. They couldn’t IM, couldn’t text, couldn’t Facebook each other. Krissy missed Facebook. And Twitter. Did people still go on Twitter? Sometimes she hated having magic, and most of the time that was when people’s electronics shut down around her. It seemed like a new iPhone was released every week, but Krissy hadn’t touched one that wasn’t irreparably damaged in over a year. Her father seemed to think it was a good thing. Krissy just mourned the loss of instant Google searches.

The _point_ was, she had no freaking idea where Dean was. She’d already been the precinct, and as she was standing outside his apartment and no one was answering her calls, she assumed that he wasn’t in there either.

 _I’m telling you, this is just a waste of time._ Kate tutted, sounding as if she was standing just to her right. Krissy knew that if she turned her head, there wouldn’t be anyone there. Kate was, like normal, just in her head.

“Don’t make me pitch you into the street,” Krissy warned. She felt like she said that multiple times a day. Kate just never shut up, and while most of the time Krissy was glad to have one friend she knew she could count on, it could be annoying having said friend with you the majority of the time. Everyone needed breaks, but since Kate was a ghost and couldn’t really do anything, Krissy felt bad for her. The small wolf figurine that held Kate’s ghost back from going wherever ghosts whet when they died seemed heavier than it normally did in her pocket.

 _You say that, but I know you don’t mean it. Give me a real threat._ Krissy could almost see Kate rolling her eyes.

“What, like not searching up porn videos for you to watch?” Krissy asked, trying not to laugh. Kate squeaked in indignation.

 _You_ know _that there aren’t a lot of things I can do! Watching TV is like, my only solstice!_

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Krissy looked around again, futilely trying to see Dean. The older wizard didn’t appear magically – transportation was her thing. Even though she didn’t have a very good grasp of it yet. Dean was trying to teach her, but he didn’t have a white spirit, and Krissy didn’t think he’d have been a good teacher even if he did. He didn’t have the patience for it.

 _You know, he could be at that dragon place. Didn’t he say that he accepted_ another _job from there?_

“Huh. You might be right.” Even if Kate _was_ right (which she most often was – Kate said that she didn’t watch all those detective shows for nothing) Krissy didn’t really want to go back to the Flightcentre by herself. The aegyls kinda freaked her out, with their weird staring and giant wings. Like, seriously. Did their wings actually need to be that big in the first place to fly? Why did they even have wings in the first place? Krissy scratched her toe back and forth along the pavement, thinking about what she wanted to do. She’d wanted to see Dean to ask him about a passage in one of the texts he’d given her that she and Kate couldn’t make sense of. It was annoying, because usually it took her a while to get through bookwork, and she’d been on a roll with this tome. It was actually interesting for once, and she didn’t want to lose the stream of thought in it that she had going on. She’d sent a message with one of her cats, but that annoying raven hadn’t come back with an answer, and she could almost feel her own magic inside Dean’s apartment, not disturbed from its nominal state.

Krissy bit her lip and hailed a cab.

~

She arrived at the Flightcentre with minimal fuss, and Krissy paid the driver, glad that the car hadn’t broken down in response to her magic. It usually only happened after a few trips, but the newer the car, the quicker her magic wreaked havoc on it.

The imposing gates of the Flightcentre loomed above her. Krissy dithered for a few seconds outside before walking inside, letting her footsteps ring out loudly, not apologising for being there. She couldn’t see many aegyl walking around the first courtyard, and most that were there were either using the space as a launch pad or a landing area. She couldn’t help but shiver a little as she surveyed the area. Her cat had its non-existential fur standing up; it was disquieted as well. After all, it’d only been a week since she had been here and… well. Had fought. It wasn’t like it’d been her first fight or anything, but it’d been her first real show down against other _wizards_. It had been weird. She’d decided pretty quickly that she had no intention of repeating the experience.

Krissy looked for an aegyl that wasn’t actively flapping its wings, and blinked as she saw probably the only person she knew walking out of a building. Hurrying over, she intercepted Claire before she reached the area where most of the aegyl who took off gathered.

“Claire!” She shouted. “Hey!”

Claire twitched, and looked over her shoulder, looking startled when she saw Krissy. “Oh, Krissy! What are you doing here?”

“Ah, just looking for Dean,” Krissy said, smiling and trying not to blush. Damn, but Claire was hot…

“He’s not here,” Claire said, edges of her mouth turning down. “It’s stressing Castiel. He looks terrible.” Claire’s eyebrows lowered and Krissy felt her heart trip a little at the… _cute_... worried look she had on.

 _She’s an aegyl, this is really not a great idea._ Krissy could almost have knocked Kate’s head from her shoulders if she were real, but she wasn’t, so she just ignored her instead.

“Uh, about the job thing, right?” Krissy asked. She hadn’t asked Dean about what the aegyl actually wanted him to do, but now she wished that she had, so she could reassure Claire. “I think he’s waiting on approval for the CPD before he can do anything. He’s bound by them until they release him from their service, you know. He can’t do anything without asking them first.”

Claire tilted her head a bit. It put her face in the light and showed the tiredness under her eyes as a sharp contrast to the rest of her skin. She must have just been the night shift, since it was still morning.

“That’s not normal, is it? I thought humans looked down upon that type of treatment.”

Krissy grimaced, suddenly regretting that she’d said anything at all. Her mouth tended to run itself when she was around someone cute. “Well, yeah, but it’s complicated. I probably shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Oh,” Claire replied. “My apologies.”

Krissy shrugged. “No big deal. I was just looking for Dean, that’s all. If I hadn’t seen you I would have had to just ask some random.” She looked around at the other aegyl, to find most of them looking at her out of the corner of their eye. If she hadn’t been chatting to Claire, then she was pretty sure that one or more of them would have come up and ‘asked’ her to leave.

“How did you recognise me?” Claire asked, taking a step back out of the way of another aegyl. Krissy followed her almost instinctively. “We’ve only really talked once.”

Krissy remembered that clearly. She’d been trying to block the gorgeous aegyl out of her thoughts, but when she got a _real_ crush, it wormed in deep. Claire was in her already, and seeing her again just cemented her already pretty certain view.

 _I_ said, _it’s a bad idea!_

Krissy couldn’t reply without looking weird to Claire, so she just stuck her hand in her pocket and flicked the wolf figure. She heard Kate grumble, but she didn’t say anything else.

Claire was still looking at her expectantly, and since Krissy thought that saying ‘well your ass is nice and I probably could have recognised it anywhere’ wasn’t exactly an appropriate response, she just blurted, “Gold things.”

Claire’s eyebrows crawled up her forehead and Krissy felt her cheeks heating and felt Kate’s metaphysical facepalm.

“Gold wings,” Krissy hurried to correct herself, tripping over the words in her haste. She hated it when she got like this around someone she liked – it made her look like an idiot. “Your wings are pretty.” Please could someone knife her so she could die instead of having Claire look at her like that.

“I… My wings are cream, not really gold,” Claire said, amusement clear in her voice. “But thank you for thinking they’re memorable.”

Krissy stood there trying to keep her mouth shut for another few seconds before shaking herself. “Umm. Yeah. Well, they are. Memorable, that is,” she said quickly.

 _At this rate I won’t even have to worry about you falling in with the wrong crowd, because your flirting skills are terrible._ Krissy could hear Kate’s snigger in the words. She flicked the figurine again.

“You should probably go,” Claire said, but Krissy could imagine that she heard real regret in her tone. Aegyl regretted stuff, right? Like, she knew conventional thought was that aegyl didn’t really have feelings, but Krissy had always written that down as a bit of BS. A ton of animals had been proven to have feelings, and they couldn’t talk or have relationships or anything. Aegyl and humans were just different species – they had the right to react differently to one another. And since contact between aegyl and humans only really happened at Fightcentres, then it was kinda reasonable that they didn’t get each other very well. Who understood someone’s character when you’ve only been around each other for an hour of two, at most? Aegyl were usually pretty chilly towards humans, but Krissy had been reading more about them since Anna’s death, and she had found the records that showed the persecution and butchery of aegyl in the past. Honestly, she wasn’t really sure why they still interacted with humans at all. Didn’t make much sense to her, but here they were, walking about and living pretty much inside Chicago. On the outskirts, sure, but there obviously wasn’t enough space for a giant block of land to hold dragons in the middle of a city. And also the skyscrapers might make it hard for the dragons and aegyl to fly around.

“If Dean isn’t here, then I guess there isn’t really a reason for me to be staying,” Krissy acknowledged. “Sorry for taking up your time. You look tired.”

Claire blinked twice in a row. Krissy wondered if that meant she was surprised.

“That’s fine,” Claire said. “You should come by again. Even if Dean doesn’t take up the position as the delegate.”

Krissy fought to not have a massive grin spread out over her face. “Yeah, maybe I will. Thanks.”

Claire shrugged one shoulder and accompanied her to the gate. Krissy looked both ways before spotting a bus station down the road. She turned to wave at Claire, who was standing right inside the gates. The young aegyl was standing perfectly still, and didn’t return Krissy’s wave. That was alright. She was still standing there, waiting and watching as Krissy trudged down the road to see if any buses were coming anytime soon.

It was a start. That was all she wanted, all she needed.

~

Claire watched as the hume left, walking down the side of the road that led to the Flightcentre. The white cat that was her soul-spirit followed along at her heels, gamely traversing the bumpy road, riddled with potholes. This was why it was easier to fly, really. There were different winds to negotiate, certainly, and she had to deal with other aegyl when she was taking off and landing, but really, it was a much quicker form of transport than just walking. She didn’t understand how humans did it all the time and didn’t just rip their hair out from the boredom of it. What could you see when you were on the ground? Nothing. She supposed they made up for it by using those strange ‘cars’ to get around. They came and parked out the front of the Flightcentre sometimes, the richly dressed people within ready to poke and peer at the dragons.

Living in the Fourth Realm was… strange. The Third Realm really wasn’t that different, if you just looked at the landscape. There were still trees and grass, hills and rocks, rivers and clouds. Just sometimes the trees turned out to be ready to rip themselves out of the earth and follow you, intending to tear you to shreds, or the hills just _moved_ because why shouldn’t they move if they didn’t like the spot they were in? Not to mention the rivers that flowed uphill against gravity, water that pooled in spheres hovering above creeks, ice forming when it got hot. She missed the low gravity of the Third Realm. Flying here was possible, but was such a drain of her energy when she was already feeling tired. However, she was pretty sure with all the exercise she’s gotten here, she could win a bunch of races if she went back to the Third Realm.

She shivered slightly. _If_ she ever went back. She knew that some aegyl spent their entire lives here, but never seeing home again… never seeing her mother again, even if it meant spending time with Castiel… She didn’t think that was worth it.

Krissy waved back at her and then continued walking. Claire wasn’t even certain why she was still standing here. The hume was already on her journey, probably to find one of those car things they all rode in. There was no purpose to her standing here, watching her leave.

She liked Krissy. She’d only ever had two conversations with her, but Claire made up her mind quickly. She’d been told that that wasn’t a good thing to do, but she could do it if she wanted to. She’d decided, and she’d invited Krissy back again. She wasn’t sure why, or what they would do or talk about, but she’d done it.

Claire bit her lip and turned, casting one lingering look over her shoulder as she made her way back to where the best take off zone was. She could think more about the young wizard when she was flying – she always thought clearer while she was in the sky.


	5. A Day at the Library

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Krissy asks the Library some pertinent questions.

It was almost getting normal to see books flying through the air, propelled by nothing more than the magic roiling through the library. Krissy narrowly ducked under a particularly heavy looking tome, wincing as she heard it strike something with a heavy _thump._

She made her way around the confusing maze of the library – she was _certain_ that it changed a little every time she came here, but she wasn’t entirely sure – to make it to the main podium, where she could summon books with just a thought. The books in her bag began moving, jostling to be free. She opened it and watching in amusement as they streaked away, ready to find their rightful places on the shelves where they belonged.

She’d been spending more and more time at the library lately. Her dad just laughed when she told him, which made her scowl most of the time. She wasn’t a _nerd_ or anything, but she did very much want to find out what was happening in the world around her. Three months after Dean had introduced her to the library, and Krissy was just beginning to realise how vast it actually was. She put her hand in her pocket, but the customary wolf figurine wasn’t there – Kate said that she didn’t like the magical atmosphere around the library, and asked to stay home. Krissy had set up five hours of TV for her to watch, and had left Kate there to watch her series of _Law and Order: Realm Four._ Krissy thought most of the magical deaths in that particular series were corny and terrible, but Kate said she loved it because it was corny and terrible and she could laugh at the investigators as they got plot point after plot point wrong. Krissy personally didn’t see the appeal, but hey, whatever made Kate shut up for a few hours was good in her books.

There were already a few wizards in the queue to use the podium, so Krissy fell into line behind them, content to wait. She wasn’t really sure what she wanted to research just yet – and if she didn’t have an idea by the time she got to the podium, then she would just ask the library for something interesting to read about. She’d done that a few times before, and while one book she’d gotten had described the procedure of a gastric bypass, she’d gotten another detailing the differences between wizards and witches.

Krissy shifted her weight between her feet as a woman with a small green dragonfly left the podium with a few books in her arms. A man with a golden Labrador was next, and after that a tired looking man with a green monkey with its arms around his neck. Krissy looked down at her cat, which was sitting, licking its paw and then rubbing it over the top of its head, looking disdainful.

When she finally arrived at the podium, she pursed her lips before deciding to do some more research on aegyl. She hadn’t seen Claire in over two months, but she didn’t want to go back to the Flightcentre and accidently offend someone or do something idiotic that she could have avoided with simple reading. She’d already been looking up _a lot_ about aegyl, because it had been her first case at the CPD, and then she’d just wanted to know more, so she’d read a few books already about them. She focused on trying to summon something informative about their social lives, and was rewarded with a decent book floating up to her. She grabbed to out of the air and nodded to the woman behind her that had a heavy red python wrapped around her neck.

Krissy found an unoccupied table out of the way of most of the traffic in the library, and opened it up to the contents page, looking for anything interesting.

  * Foreword
  * Chapter 1: General Outline and History
  * Chapter 2: Hierarchy
  * Chapter 3: Male and Female Roles
  * Chapter 4: Lifespan
  * Chapter 5: Diet
  * Chapter 6: The Third Realm
  * Chapter 7: History with Humans
  * Chapter 8: Dragons
  * Chapter 9: Relationship with Other Realms



Krissy frowned at them before deciding to start at the first chapter.

_A history of the aegyl, or “Angel” directly translated from Enochian, can be traced through a history of their Clans. An Angel’s Clan means everything to them – it dictates their role in society, their relationship with humans and other Realms, and how they individually act. Without a Clan, an Angel is useless, cast adrift without the guidance they’ve relied upon for their entire long lives._

Huh. Krissy wouldn’t have thought that the Clans were that important. Sure, each Clan had their own separate Flightcentre in different cities, but this made it sound like they were different countries or something.

_A Clan Leader has ultimate authority over each life in their Clan – these all powerful Angel can be either male or female. Clan Leadership usually passes down through the generations, parent to child, but in some Clans this Leadership can be challenged and another bloodline installed if a child is deemed unworthy._

Krissy didn’t know where Claire was in her Clan hierarchy. Although didn’t Castiel say that he was the son of the Clan Leader? And Claire was Castiel’s niece, so she must be related to the Clan Leader somehow. That probably counted for something in aegyl speak. She flipped a few pages, scanning the information to try and absorb as much as she could.

_Angel magic is another way that status within the Clan is organised. Usually, the Clan Leader is the strongest Angel, and can put down any challenge to their leadership. Usually mating with the strongest Angel they can find, their offspring is then slated to be strong enough to maintain the Clan Leader position. Often if a child without magic is born, this disqualifies them from obtaining the Clan Leader position if magic is valued highly in that specific Clan._

Claire didn’t have any magic, did she? She knew that Castiel didn’t, because Dean told her so. Another question to ask her when she saw Claire. Krissy ripped a page off the complimentary notepad, and stared at it for a long few seconds before whispering a few words. Soft white magic made the sheet of paper glow for a second, before it reformed itself into a pencil. She picked it up and began writing on another sheet of paper, questions to ask Claire when they next meet up.

She took more notes as she read, the flow of people around creating a soft atmosphere she could block out easily enough.

_Angels often do not differentiate between male and female in their roles – indeed, in Enochian there is no specific pronouns for Angels in the way that most human languages do. The only difference between the ‘male’ and ‘female’ is the role they have in producing offspring. For a species that can live for over five hundred years, it is not very surprising that they do not reproduce very often, and instead value each member of society in how they contribute to the group as a whole._

_Instead of gender, Angel society is usually separated into different ‘garrisons.’ These are the different roles that Angel play, and usually fall into the category of warriors or protectors. Warriors are the Angel that defend each Clan from other Clans. Interestingly, they do not have a secondary function as a type of police force – in fact, there is almost no back up if an Angel wishes to deviate from the norm and go against the Clan Leader. While this is true, in the four or five hundred years that humans have been interacting with Angels, there has been very little show of disobedience. The only documented cases are eye witness only, and contain reports of Angels challenging the next Clan Leader. Apart from this one act of intersociety violence, there appears to be little dissent, and no acting dissent among the Angel as a species inside their Clans._

_This raises several important questions, but the primary one is why? Why are Angels so unlikely to revolt against Clan Leaders, against orders that they do not maybe wish to follow? Several possible reasons have been put forward, but as the Angels themselves refuse to discuss anything of the sort, we only have hypothesises._

_One: Angels do have dissent, but such individuals are either exiled or killed outright and then banished from memory._

_Two: The method of governance and the economic method the Angels employ simply means that they simply have no reason to revolt._

_Three: The Angels are_ incapable _of making their own decisions and merely exist to follow the commands of their Leader, regarded as nothing more than ways to complete necessary jobs for the Clan. This can be seen in several animal species, where the dominant male/female use their nests or partners for gathering food or being food after they have mated. As Angels have clear sentient thought, however, this author suggests that this theory is unlikely, unless serious gaslighting and abuse from a very young age is used to indoctrinate Angels into the way of thinking of their elders._

Krissy leaned back, staring at the passage. Claire was just another person, right? Like, she had wings and could speak Enochian, but other than that Krissy had thought her the same as any other person. Her cat stood up and walked around the table in unease as she thought.

Most of the books that she’d been reading were written along the same line of thinking – aegyl weren’t human, didn’t have emotions, ect. Krissy had thought that was bullshit from the start, but what was her opinion coming from? Just what she’d seen over a few weeks while being around a few select aegyl? She bit her lip and continued. It was just one opinion. She was looking for information, not opinions, so she skipped a few pages and kept reading.

_Angel lifespan is much more than humans, however less than the immortal races of the First, Fifth and some of the Second Realms. Why this happens is a continuing mystery for aegyl scholars everywhere. Why are the biology of the vampire and the werewolf different? Why does an Angel live for five times longer than a human? The answer seems to come down to magic. While magic is inherent in every human – thus providing an explanation as to why any human can become a witch – some have more magic than others. The 1 in 200 stat is proportionate for the entire human race. At the time of writing, there are six and a half billion people on the planet. This would suggest the population of wizards to be approximately 32,500,000. However, these are not arranged statistically around the globe. Indeed, there are more wizards in Australia than Canada, despite there being about twelve million more people in Canada than Australia._

_To relate back to Angels, it does appear that the wizards in the population, wherever it may be, have extended natural lifespans. Where wizards are not hunted because of their magic and are allowed it practise it freely and openly, they have a recorded increase of up to thirty years in lifespan – it is not odd to have one hundred and twenty year old wizards living and learning, still able to do almost everything that they could at age fifty. While the numbers are small, the earlier a wizard manifests their Talent, the longer they live._

_What effect would there be if wizards were filled with magic from the day they were born, like Angels? Would they live, one hundred and fifty, sixty, seventy years? Longer? If their parents were filled with magic, and their parents were filled with magic, might they live to two hundred? Three hundred? Five hundred, just like the Angel?_

_A broader study would indicate that species that are contrived and thrive only on magic, like vampires, show that vampires do not age as either humans or Angels do. Instead, the longer they live, the more powerful and influential they become. This again delves into the question of what, exactly, magic is, where is comes from, and what its influence on the different Realms and races really means. I will not attempt to answer that: indeed, I suspect that trying to grasp the origins and intricacies of magic as a whole will be largely impossible for generations to come. Instead, I merely seek to prove the point that with magic, comes longer life – those that are full of it are immortal, much like the magic itself._

Krissy turned the page, intrigued. She hadn’t written anything on her list for a while now, but that was fine; she was pretty sure this was going to stick in her head simply because it was so interesting.

She flicked through the next few chapters, reading about how aegyl were mostly vegetarian, about the Third Realm and its make up, and about how aegyl had originally came into contact with humans when human wizards figured out a way to jump between Realms. She finished the book and closed it, pondering everything she had just read. Her cat was asleep on the table next to her, curled up with its tail over its nose.

Krissy checked her watch – the simplest sort she could find. She was pretty sure it wouldn’t have looked out of place in the early 1800s – and saw that she’d been reading for a good two hours. She lifted the book up in the air and offered it to the library: the book obliged, bouncing a little on her fingertips before whizzing off to wherever it came from.

Krissy tapped her fingers along the table in front of her, debating with herself whether or not she could go and get another book. It _was_ nearing lunch time though, so she got up, almost hearing a protesting yowl from her cat at the edge of her mind, and made her way towards the entrance so she could duck outside to find a place that sold coffee and had some good lunch options.

Chicago never disappointed, and Krissy quickly found a Starbucks and a little shop tucked into a corner where she picked up an awesome looking Kibbeh wrap. Munching on her lunch, she loitered at the edge of the street, watching the foot traffic go past.

Dean had been trying to teach her how to distinguish who was magical and who wasn’t, so she squinted a little and tried to look past the obvious. Wizards had their spirits, which was the easiest way to identify them, but they could hide as well. Krissy could shove her cat under a jacket or a large hat, and no one would be any wiser for it. That was why she had to have a lookout on all accounts.

By the time she was done, she thought she had spotted a vampire or two, and maybe one faerie, but as she wasn’t very keep to go up and ask them if she was right, she couldn’t know if she’d been on the money or not. Sighing to herself, Krissy ditched the coffee cup and wrap exterior in the garbage and moved back to head up the stairs of the library once more.

She didn’t spare the normal humans inside any glances – they were studying, yes, but they didn’t have any spirits anywhere about them. Most of them looked around college age, so they probably studying for a final or project.

Krissy made herself look at the ground, not at them. Dean had said that there was a magical equivalent to college – well, he had said it, but he hadn’t sounded like it was completely the same. He’d said that his brother, Sam, was studying there. Dean had also said that it took fourteen years to complete. Fourteen! That was completely ridiculous. It was longer than her entire schooling career in human school – excluding college, of course.

School right now was probably harder than it’d ever been before. Not only had she only been three weeks into the new school before she got the cat that was strolling by her side, but she hadn’t been especially nice to anyone in that time either. Now she was a few months from graduating, and she didn’t really know what she wanted to do next.

The only advantage that she had was that she’d manifested her Talent young. The average age for discovering Talent was twenty four to twenty six, so she had ten more years to think about what she wanted to do. Twenty six was time enough to make a decision, in her opinion.

Krissy looked around the make sure that no one was watching – not that there was anyone ever in this section of the library, but it never hurt to make sure. The one time she didn’t check would be the one time someone noticed, and it’d probably all come down on her. Although, now that she was thinking about it, it didn’t make much sense that people didn’t follow her down here. After all, wizards were still quite rare, and though Chicago had more than its fair share, she would have thought that the large number of wizards coming in and going out of the library would have made _someone_ curious by now. It wasn’t like she tried to hide that she was coming in here, and her cat-spirit was always walking proudly at her side. Like, she even had her Council white cloak on, to make it easier to sign in and out. She’d seen enough other wizards both coming in and going out that it should have been remarked upon.

As Krissy made her way to the large podium where she could summon books, she thought it over. Dean had said when he first took her here that the library was magical. Maybe it dissuaded people from coming after the wizards when they went back to the magical part of the library?

She shrugged to herself, biting back a comment to thin air. Not having Kate with her was a bit weird, but the ghost and she spent enough time together as it was – they needed a break from each other sometimes. And she didn’t need the other wizards looking at her like she was crazy.

Krissy tapped her fingers against the paper she had in her pocket. A list of questions, queries. Would Claire answer any of them? Or would she retreat against the fragile start of _something_ that they’d managed to build up? Was this too fast? Too slow? Too weird?  She wasn’t sure. Attacking Claire with the questions probably wasn’t the best way to go, however. Maybe she could find out some extra info first, and then just drop of a few hints so she could get some clarification.

She pulled the list out of her pocket and looked at it.

  1. ~~What Clan are you from?~~ Novak, dumbass
  2. How do Clans interact
  3. Clan hierarchy??? Where does claire/cas stand
  4. Do you have magic
  5. What garrison are you in??
  6. ~~Do you have emotions??~~ Y would u ask that, idiot. Of course she has feelings
  7. ~~How old are you?~~ Is that weird????? Ugh



It was a start, even if she felt a bit uncomfortable even looking at some of the questions, including the ‘do you have emotions’ which she’d scribbled out with such ferocity that her pen had gone through the page.

She heaved a sigh and started walking back to the podium. At least if she had some more info, she wouldn’t feel as weird as she did at the thought of asking Claire these questions.

There was only one other wizard at the podium, so she didn’t have to wait long before she could stare at her questions and hope that the library picked up on _something._

She felt the library purr, and it spat out two books for her – _On Aegyl Clans_ and _Magic in Magical Creatures._

Krissy took the books and gave her place up to a lady with a purple otter wrapped around her ankles. Maybe these books would tell her something interesting. 

And then at least she would have something to talk about with Claire. If they ever even met up again.  _Ugh._

Krissy shook her head and headed back to her table. Relationships were  _hard._

**Author's Note:**

> if you're curious about something and would like to see it happen here, drop me a line and I'll see what I can do


End file.
